I even gave money for Biden's election, and yes he is a 1,000 times better than FFvC. However, even though I wouldn't use the word 'progressive' as my political label, this article is a decent summery of my brewing frustration of getting yet another Democratic President that seems to be heading down the Neocon light path. FFvC pooched our deal with Iran every way he could. Biden is demanding that Iran take the first steps towards a return to the deal. WTF? We bombed yet again in Syria where we have no legal bases to have any military operations, and we lecture China on a "rules-based order that maintains global stability"? And why would Biden nominate Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs. A few months in, and I'm unimpressed...
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/03/...m-a-centrist-democrat-they-make-him-a-neocon/
My own initial analysis of Biden’s foreign policy outlook pinned him as a classical Democrat, but his first moves put him further and well beyond the center to the right than what generally defines a classical foreign policy Democrat.
Humanitarian reasons as a justification for the use of force is what separates hawkish centrist Democrats from the neocons on the right. And that’s not a small difference. For neocons, spreading democracy and regime change suffices. But that’s not the case for Democrats. The Biden Administration knows this very well. That’s why what counts as “humanitarian” in Syria is key for the Biden Administration and that’s why “humanitarian” is getting a very ugly, tortured reading in the first State Department statements. This week the State Department’s Spokesperson Ned Price tweeted that the State Department commemorates the one year anniversary of the death of 33 Turkish soldiers who “lost their lives protecting innocent Syrian civilians in Idlib from the brutality of the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers”.
A refresher on Nuland:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/bidens-firing-squad-stands-in-a-circle/
As I wrote in a March 19 commentary (“Life after death for the neoconservatives”), the nomination of neo-conservative Victoria Nuland as undersecretary of state for political affairs will be read in Moscow as well as European capitals as a declaration of intent for regime change in Russia. Ms. Nuland was prominently associated with America’s 2014 involvement in the Maidan coup in Ukraine, which Nuland and others in the US security establishment hoped would be repeated in Moscow.